Géla Babluani’s 13, a remake of his own 13 Tzameti, is arty, self-serious macho bullshit, and it’s also a lot of fun. The director still takes his original premise too seriously, but it’s a problem that only really becomes apparent during 13’s last 20 minutes, so until then, you easily get lost watc...

Can a play about personal conflicts in the nascent world of psychiatry at the turn of the 20th century be translated into an effective film? In the hands of playwright/screenwriter Christopher Hampton, director David Cronenberg, and three exceptional actors, the answer is yes. It takes some getting ...

It almost seems too easy. Get some poverty stricken Indian children, pair them up with a composer, and send them to a prestigous, fancy pants performing arts center to wow an audience with songs from everybody's favorite "The Sound Of Music." And yes, while "The Sound Of Mumbai&qu...

Marked by an admirable, but certainly not spectacular performance by Michelle Williams -- in a role she's arguably not very suited for -- some wonderful costuming, set design and locations, and a stand-out supporting turn by Judi Dench, there aren't many other favorable things to say about &...

It's no surprise that film critics are loving "Hugo," Martin Scorsese's valentine to the birth of cinema and reinvention of the art of 3-D (November 23). In fact, as I was rejiggering my Oscar chart I recognized that in a field of small-scale movies this year, the $150-m...

One of my favorite films from this year's Toronto International Film Festival, "Rampart," which has an Oscar-qualifying one-week run starting this Friday in theaters, is a deeply fascinating portrait of masculinity in crisis, and as I argued after Toronto, shares with "Shame&qu...

The record of anonymous police in riot gear facing down unarmed protestors takes on a new dimension when it's witnessed away from their heated environments. By way of apparent serendipity, gritty cop drama "Rampart" addresses this topic head-on.

Yes, we already pretty much reviewed Martin Scorese's "Hugo" when it surprise-screened at the New York Film Festival last month in a not-quite-complete version. Even then in its unfinished state, The Playlist staff on hand were swept away by the fable conjured up on screen, and with th...

My Week With Marilyn seems like a terrible idea: one more take on the poor-little Marilyn story, this time with fabulous lookalike Michelle Williams. But this sharp little film is much more than that. The story of one week in 1956, when Monroe and Laurence Olivier were making The Prince and The...

Making a truly classic Christmas movie is a feat that few achieve but many try their hand at. In recent years, studios have cynically tried to graft "edgy" material onto all-audiences Christmas approaches, often times involving Vince Vaughn for reasons that remain obscure, and the results ...